Birth of a Boygod 2015

Jana Brike painted this piece, Birth of a Boygod, without a given date, and from the looks of it, it's oil on canvas. It’s all about dreamy washes of colour, right? And that feels like a process, a slow build-up, a kind of meditation. There’s something about the way Brike handles the paint. See how thin and transparent it is, especially in the sky and the boygod’s skin? But then, bam! Thick and textured in the waves. It’s like she's playing with our expectations. It makes me think about the emotional experience of being caught between vulnerability and power. Look at the petals falling around the boy’s head. They are so delicately rendered, almost like fleeting thoughts or memories. In contrast, the jagged rocks at the bottom of the frame feel solid, grounded, a kind of earthly anchor. It’s that tension, that push-pull, which makes the painting so compelling. Brike’s work has the same slightly unsettling vibe as some of Paula Rego’s paintings, where childhood innocence meets something darker and more mysterious. Art like this, it’s not about answers, it’s about asking questions.